Dog frozen to tracks rescued minutes before train came

By wire services
Published December 25, 2005

CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. - He's missing a lot of hair, but a Siberian husky has a new name and a new life, thanks to a construction worker and police officer who rescued him from a railroad track minutes before a train arrived.

Jeremy Majorowicz thought it was a little strange that the dog had been sitting on the track for an hour and a half in the cold, and stranger still that he wouldn't accept a bite of muffin.

"I have two dogs myself, so I didn't want to leave the dog if there was something wrong," Majorowicz said, so he called police.

Officer Tim Strand said the dog was "shivering unmercifully" when he arrived Monday and would not come to him, so he called animal control officer Al Heyde, who also couldn't get the dog to budge.

"I lifted his tail and hind quarters, and saw he was literally frozen to the tracks," Strand said. Strand pulled hard on the dog's tail and was able to release him, but the dog lost a lot of hair. "He gave a heck of a whelp," he said.

Just 10 minutes later, a train came down the track. "If the dog would have seen that train I'm afraid it would have been the end of the pupster," Strand said.

The dog was taken to the Chippewa County Humane Association, where workers named him Ice Train.

Police said they received a call at 4:52 a.m. Friday from a Blue Springs man who said his girlfriend was having trouble breathing. When they arrived at the house they found the 24-year-old woman had a cell phone lodged in her throat.

"He wanted the phone and she wouldn't give it to him, so she attempted to swallow it," said Detective Sgt. Steve Decker of the Blue Springs Police Department. "She just put the entire phone in her mouth so he couldn't get it."

Police said an ambulance took the woman to a hospital in Blue Springs. A hospital spokeswoman said she couldn't give details about the woman's health since police have not released her identity.